


Standing Still in a Kaleidoscope

by Queen of the Castle (queen_of_the_castle_77)



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drama, F/M, Horror, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:55:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_of_the_castle_77/pseuds/Queen%20of%20the%20Castle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five and a half hours have long since passed. Rose and Mickey have to learn to stand on their own on a spaceship in the 51st century when the Doctor doesn’t return to save them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Goes AU during ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’. The loose connection in the fireplace works slightly differently than in canon.

The floor felt as if it had dropped from beneath her feet, and the new world she’d plummeted into in kept shifting, time moving on and on no matter how much Rose Tyler wished it would just _stop_. She just wanted to stand still for a moment. She needed the world to fall away, to be still and silent, so that she could just _think_.

But after one full day had passed, Rose gave up on thinking about it. It wasn’t working. It wasn’t doing her any good. Particularly not thinking about _him_. She had to stop. He was gone, and focusing on that wouldn’t change it.

The Doctor was _gone_.

Since she was stuck in the future on a spaceship that was deserted but for two people, all that was really left to think about instead was herself and Mickey. Usually she thought more about herself than she probably should. Mickey could attest to that, and she could admit it (and maybe apologise for it, if pressed) freely enough now that that time seemed so far in their past. But for right now ...

Right now, she thought that if she considered herself, and what all this meant for her, she’d start crying and never be able to stop.

Which left Mickey.

She found it hilarious, in a dark sort of way. Mickey had been hoping for years for the day that he might become the most important person in existence to her. And that day had finally arrived just at a time when Mickey had begun to grow past defining himself by her approval, and in the place they were probably both going to die.

Talk about bad timing.

She found Mickey exploring the TARDIS. She suspected the TARDIS had reconfigured herself to make it easier for Rose to track him down, because she somehow doubted that they would have both have just accidentally stumbled into this room that she’d never seen before. Certainly, she shouldn’t have found him there less than two minutes after she’d stepped back through the outer TARDIS doors into the console room.

“Still no sign of him, then?” Mickey asked warily.

“No. No sign.”

Rose didn’t think that in all the history of the universe any three words, not even ‘I love you’, had ever held such weighted implication. With them, she was conveying a number of other three-word sentences. ‘He’s not coming,’ she was saying. ‘He’s left us.’ ‘We can’t escape.’ ‘We’ll die here.’

They looked at each other for a long moment before Mickey reached for her. She hoped the hug comforted him much more than it did her, as she barely allowed herself to feel it at all. She couldn’t afford anything that could send her off into misery right then. She had things to do.

“What’re we gonna do, Rose?” Mickey asked desperately.

“You and me? We’re gonna sort it out, that’s what,” she replied resolutely. She wished she could actually be anything close to as sure as she sounded.

“But we’re stuck here, aren’t we? We can’t exactly fly the TARDIS home. Not without him.”

That wasn’t the first time in the last twenty-four hours Mickey had said that. Rose wished he would stop. They both knew it already. No point in rubbing it in any further. Continuing to mope about waiting for a solution to present itself out of thin air wasn’t going to do them any good.

Rose smiled humourlessly, intent on lightening the situation. “Where’s a big yellow truck when you need one, eh?”

Mickey laughed, and laughed, and laughed. She supposed that meant it was a job well done on shifting the mood. Too well done, maybe. She thought he’d gone a bit hysterical, actually, just for a minute or so. Rose didn’t blame him. It was better than crying, and crying, and crying, which was all _she_ really wanted to do when it came right down to it.

When Mickey calmed down, his face grew serious again. “The Doctor has a failsafe, though, right? In the TARDIS? What about that thing he did to send you home? You know, _before_ the big yellow truck. That emergency thingy you told us about.”

Rose shook her head. “Even if I could figure out how to activate it, we couldn’t risk it. I don't think the Doctor ever got the chance to reprogram it. It’ll be set for the exact same time and place it was last time. If we used it, we’d land right on top of where I landed last time. I ... there’s these things, they’re called Reapers. I’ve seen them at work. Two me’s, two TARDISes, same place and time? It’ll change everything, and the Reapers will come. We won’t have the Doctor to help us get rid of them, either. So we can’t. Not and be sure that we won’t destroy the whole Earth. Maybe even the universe; I was never real clear on that.”

“Better not, then,” Mickey said. She suspected he’d tried to sound joking. It just came out flat.

“It’s all right, though,” Rose said, “because this ship might be deserted, but it’s got everything we need. D’you know why?”

“Why?”

“’Cuz it’s got you, Mickey Smith.”

“Me? What’m I gonna do?”

Rose allowed the barest whiff of a smile creep onto her face. “How would you feel about being the tin dog one last time?”

* * *

Mickey might be all right with computers back home, this wasn’t London in 2006. Far from it. It was a whole three thousand years in their future, as a matter of fact. The technology was so much more advanced that Mickey didn’t really stand a chance. It was uselessly defeatist to even think that to herself, but somehow Rose couldn’t help it.

She remembered a time when she was wide-eyed and optimistic enough to save the life of a creature who’d killed hundreds and wanted to kill her as well. Those days had long since passed, ripped away from her like flesh in a werewolf's claws.

“Can’t we just use the TARDIS to send out a signal?” Mickey asked. “I bet it’d transmit it across half the universe, it’s so powerful. And you lot keep telling me it’s alive, so maybe it’d sort of give us a hand. Don’t you think? More than this hunk of junk ship is doin’, anyway.”

Rose shook her head. “Think of all the things that’d zero in on us if they found out the TARDIS was here. We can’t risk anyone – or anythin’ – that shows up layin’ hands on it.”

Mickey just nodded. Rose didn’t have the heart to add that she doubted anyone would be showing up at all at this stage.

Rose would never admit it aloud, even under pain of death, but she’d actually never for a moment believed that her ‘plan’ to have Mickey send out a distress signal from the ship would actually work. She’d just needed Mickey to believe he could do it. The _real_ plan was to distract Mickey and keep him in high spirits while she figured out a way for them to survive on the ship for the foreseeable future.

Never for a moment, either, did Rose doubt that they spend the rest of their lives on that ship. But Rose thought that if they could figure out a way to ration things on the TARDIS, and maybe a way to at least turn on the heating in the spaceship, 'the rest of their lives' might at least last a long time. It wasn’t the end of her world, being stuck there, she thought. There were worse people to be trapped with than Mickey Smith. And at least they’d both have some company to keep them from going mad with loneliness and boredom.

And really, even though her once endless optimism had faded enough that she couldn’t really see a way out, she was still a glass-half-full type of girl. There was something to be glad for on that damn ship; at least the clockwork ship mechanics, or whatever they’d been, weren’t still around to use Rose's and Mickey's bodies for parts.

She found out just how glad she really was of that when a familiar shriek echoed throughout the ship. She thought back on vacuum-packed rats for a moment before the associations that had with the Doctor forced her to cut the thought off. Knowing that Mickey could overreact to things, Rose expected that he’d probably just tripped over, or maybe found a rat of the less dead-and-packaged variety in one of the nooks in the ship that they had yet to discover.

There were no rats, she later remembered, but there were plenty of bugs.

Rose stumbled out of the room and threw up on the floor. She stayed there, hunched over with the hard floor digging into her knees, until her dry-heaves turned into coughing. Moisture welled in her eyes, though it never quite gathered enough to be shed. She wondered whether that was just her eyes watering as the inevitable outcome of turning herself inside out, or whether she’d been caught off guard and was finally letting herself cry about something. If anything she’d seen in all of her life deserved tears, this had to be it.

The walls seemed to sway dizzily around her. She shifted into a sitting position and hung her head between her knees, just trying to breathe deeply enough so that she wouldn’t pass out.

She’d hate to wake up right next to _that_.

Mickey had obviously frozen in place, in shock, as he'd spent quite a lot longer in that room than Rose had ... or than Rose could have done without going mad, for that matter. When he finally stumbled out on clearly shaky legs, he braced his weight against the wall of the corridor for a moment before letting himself slide down to the floor just a few feet to Rose’s right.

“Why couldn’t we smell it from across the ship?” he asked a minute later, breaking the long silence.

Rose’s head jerked around to look at him incredulously. “You’ve been in there, starin’ at – at _that_ , and you want to know ... how ... the _smell_ ... _fuck_ , Mickey!”

Mickey just shook his head, swallowing reflexively. Rose wondered whether he was going to be sick as well. She might feel better if he was. At least then she’d know that he’d been as affected by this as she had.

“What else is there to say?” he asked instead. “There’s just ... there’s no words. For that.”

“No, there’s no words,” she agreed weakly.

No words, only a mental image that she’d never, in the entire breadth of her life (which might not be all that much longer if they couldn’t sort themselves out) forget.

Bodies upon bodies, tossed sort of carelessly all about the room, rotting where they’d been discarded. Gaping chest wounds, and empty eye sockets, and so, so much dried and congealed blood. What must have been millions of bugs. And, yes, the smell. Rose couldn’t quite get the scent of it out of her nostrils. Might never be able to.

A year, the Doctor had said. A year since the ship had last moved. Those poor souls had been torn apart and left to decompose, and in a whole year the repair droids had just _ignored_ them.

And _they_ clearly hadn’t been able to send out a distress signal either, though not for lack of knowledge of the systems. The attack from the droids must have happened so unexpectedly, for them to be caught off guard like that.

It didn’t look like it had been a particularly fast death for any of them, all the same.

She leaned away from Mickey and heaved again until her stomach gave up on its rebellion, seeming to realise it wasn’t doing any good. There was nothing left inside her right then.

Nothing at all.

Mickey closed the door to the room again. Maybe he wanted to leave those people there to rest, with that room as their undisturbed tomb. Or possibly it was just to keep the smell or the insects contained. Rose didn’t want to question it too deeply.

She’d let herself be led back to the TARDIS without protest, but without doing much to help Mickey out either.

“That could’ve been us,” Mickey said a long time later. “Those clock things were going to do that to us, and then the Doctor saved us. If he’d got back any later ... But Rose, the Doctor isn’t here to save us anymore, so what happens now? If somethin’ tries to kill us now, what happens?”

It would succeed, Rose thought. She wasn’t sure whether she’d answered aloud.

* * *

A few days after finding the remains of the ship’s crew, Rose realised that it was time to stop sitting around feeling hopeless. It was time to take charge. _Really_ take charge, not just put on an act for Mickey's benefit.

She’d seen a werewolf tearing a man apart right in front of her just a few months ago. She’d handled that then. She could handle this now, even without the Doctor there to hold her hand and support her.

And she made the decision that, no matter how impossible it seemed, they _were_ going to get off that ship, just as she’d been assuring Mickey all that time. Damned if she was going to stay there long enough to become just another of the rotting bodies.

Mickey had spent those few days continuing to search the unchartered areas on the ship, getting the lay of the land. Rose couldn’t quite believe that he was willing to risk finding something else equally as horrific as _that room_. That was not the Mickey Smith she’d remembered, who avoided terrifying things at all costs. Certainly it wasn’t the Mickey Smith who had clung to her legs to stop her from running off with the Doctor the first time.

Mickey had grown up while she wasn’t looking. She’d always loved him (even when she’d made _him_ question whether that was true), and she’d accepted him for what he was, but for the first time she actually felt really proud of him.

That was even more the case when he showed her how he had found some old, obviously outdated technical equipment that (unlike everything else on the ship) was similar enough to 21st century computer systems that he had at least an outside chance of being able to use it, given enough time.

“You and me?” Mickey said evenly. “We’re gonna get out of ’ere. That’s what you said. I’m not lettin’ you give up.”

Rose was fairly certain that wasn’t precisely what she’d said at all, since she doubted she’d ever explicitly promised they’d be able to get off the ship. But the set of Mickey’s jaw let her know in no uncertain terms that he was going to hold her to that sentiment regardless. And she believed it just as much as he did now, anyway. She had to.

It was then that Rose saw that Mickey felt exactly the same way she did. It was right there in his eyes. He was driving himself to figure out how to get away from that hellhole of a ship, because he had to keep moving. He was hanging by a thread, just like her.

Rose remembered her decision, all those weeks ago, that she needed to think about Mickey. Mickey, who wasn’t used to being in space, and who’d only had a couple of mild life-or-death brushes as compared to Rose's frequent _certainty_ that this time she was really going to die. Rose was the one who had experience in this arena. She was the one who had to be strong, so that Mickey could lean on her long enough to find his own strength as well. He’d already done pretty well without her. She tried to imagine what could happen if she just helped him; pushed him, and pushed herself as well.

“Yeah,” Rose said, pulling herself to her feet. She walked over to Mickey and took his hand. “We’re gonna get out of ’ere,” she echoed. “Just you watch.”

* * *

When the loud repetitious bleeping sound started, Rose jumped a little, shocked. It took her a moment to understand that it was the sound of a signal. A distress signal, which could be tracked back to them. Which could lead to their rescue.

She looked to Mickey, who looked back at her with a dawning smile.

Mickey ran across the room and swept Rose into his arms. Somehow their lips found each other’s for the first time in many months – years, for Mickey. Rose pulled away, though not so far that his arms had to drop from around her. They looked at each other, suddenly very serious.

“Yeah?” Mickey asked.

Mickey was smart; more so than Rose had ever really given him credit for. He was well aware that this wasn’t them starting up their relationship again. This was about a mixture of comfort and celebration, about proper human contact in an isolated maze of dark twisted metal. And because he was aware of it, and because he obviously needed it as much as Rose did, she didn’t think this was just another occasion on which she was being selfish at his expense. That was how she justified it, anyway.

“Yeah,” she replied.

Of course, they might have been better off to wait until they’d got back to the TARDIS, with its heating and abundance of warm beds and other creature comforts. Still, Mickey’s body draped on top of her, and him inside her, providing a welcome contrast against the metal pressing against her back, was just about exactly what she needed right then.

Except that Mickey’s hands ran down her body, cupping her breast, and Rose thought that that too should feel colder than it did. It should be another hand exploring her, feeling between her legs, making her squirm.

But she and the Doctor were never like that, were they? And now they never would be.

Rose wondered whether the Doctor was similarly taking comfort in a French courtesan across time and space. She wondered whether he thought about her at all, with Madame de Pompadour to keep him company. He’d been obviously infatuated with the woman, after all. Perhaps he’d forgotten all about Rose.

“Mickey,” she breathed purposely as she arched into him, resolutely thinking about the man she was with rather than the man she wished would come back for her, already.

Of course, trying not to think about the Doctor meant that of course she was thinking about him. She was thinking about the Doctor while having sex. With someone else.

She resolved to never let on to Mickey. He’d be hurt. Or maybe he’d just laugh her out of the room.

* * *

When a rescue finally arrived over a month later, Rose felt the first stirrings of hope that she and Mickey might actually make it back home to the 21st century.

They were in the 51st century, the Doctor had announced as they’d left the safety of the TARDIS and boarded the spaceship. But somehow, even having been told that, Rose had never quite joined the dots in her head and thought of Jack and the Time Agency. The Agency had, she was told later, been called in when the origin of the distress signal was linked with traces of temporal displacement energy. Or something like that. It’d sort of gone over Rose’s head a little, like half of the techno-babble the Doctor spouted.

 _Had_ spouted, she reminded herself.

But the important thing was that they were there – the Time Agency, that was, not Jack, because it’d be awkward and worryingly paradoxical if she met Jack now before he’d met her. Right there in front of her were Time Agents, with their Vortex Manipulators, which could take them just about anywhere. Including 2006, London, England, Earth.

Things might have gone as smoothly as her asking nicely for a ride back to that time and place if the Agents hadn’t decided to ‘secure’ the ship and found what was left of the bodies. They looked as horrified and disgusted as Rose herself had been. The difference was, of course, that Rose and Mickey had both known exactly how those people had come to be there in that state. With no repair droids left on the ship as proof of their story, the Time Agents came to the inevitable conclusion that she and Mickey might well have killed all those people.

She could see yet another prison cell on the horizon. Well, she’d probably had worse. That whole ship had been like one big prison cell, after all, and she’d been there for months. At least now she and Mickey would get a bit of a change of scenery.

The good thing about being suspected of brutally murdering a whole group of people was that it tended to keep the Time Agent’s attention squarely on her and Mickey. So much so that the perception filter was enough to make their eyes slide past the TARDIS as if it wasn’t there. Rose hated to think what would happen if the Time Agency got their hands on that prize. She was pretty sure that human beings weren’t meant to have that sort of power.

They were transported somewhere – Rose initially had presumed Earth, but then realised she hadn’t a clue where, actually – and locked up in a room. She thought they might be inside the Time Agency itself. Vortex manipulators galore, just waiting to be ‘borrowed’, and somewhere there had to be instructions for how to actually use the damn things. If only she and Mickey could get out of there and _find_ them.

Jack had often told her stories about shagging his way out of prisons and pending executions. Rose had thought at the time that he was exaggerating. Surely Jack was one of a kind. They couldn’t all be as hang-up-free about sex as all that, even three thousand years in the future.

Apparently, though, he’d been right on the money. Even though they were being held for suspected murder, it took the young Time Agent guarding their room – or cell, she supposed, though it didn’t seem like any prison cell she’d ever been in – less than half an hour to start hitting on her.

Perhaps he was new to the job, Rose thought. Perhaps he just wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room. Whatever the case, Rose didn’t even have to touch him, let alone have sex with him. She just lured him inside the room with coy smiles and promising eyes, and let Mickey take care of the rest with a quick double-fisted bash over the head.

“Sorry,” she whispered to the man’s now unconscious body as she grabbed the ID-card from his uniform and slid it across the lock. The light turned green and the door unsealed itself. Rose kissed the card gratefully. Who needed psychic paper, then?

Making her way, with Mickey tagging behind her by only a foot or so, through the building without being noticed wasn’t particularly the easiest thing she’d ever done. Still, Rose thought that they might have arrived fairly early in the Time Agency’s history, based on the low level of security. She would just bet that things were about to tighten up once word got around that two people in custody had slipped past their notice and escaped.

Once they’d found the room where the Vortex Manipulators were stored and had knocked out yet another guard – “So sorry,” she whispered again – they got hold of two wristbands and an instruction manual and locked themselves in an empty room while they fiddled about with the Manipulators, trying to make them work.

When they thought they had some idea of what the buttons all did, Rose and Mickey both attached their respective wristbands firmly and activated the devices at the same time, their hands grasped together in the hope that that would prevent them from being separated.

They appeared in the middle of a group of wild-looking people, spears whirling through the air to point decisively at their fronts and a blazing fire nearly scorching their backs.

“I think we got it a little wrong,” Rose muttered to Mickey.

“Hi!” she announced more loudly and cheerfully to the people surrounding them, adding a little wave for good measure. If possible, the expressions of the other people grew even angrier.

“Emergency recall button?” Mickey asked.

“Emergency recall button,” Rose agreed.

They ended up right back in their locked room, breathing a little harder than when they’d left.

“Well, it looked like Earth at least,” Rose offered.

Mickey raised an eyebrow.

Rose sighed. “Hey, I learned time travel from the Doctor. What’d you expect?”

* * *

A lot of different places (or ‘detours’ as Mickey had jokingly called them) and a _hell_ of a lot of jeopardy later, they arrived in London in the right time period. Not quite late 2006, as would have been preferable. But hey, 2008 wasn’t too shabby. And it wasn’t as if her mother hadn’t been through not knowing where she was for a year or so before. At least this time Jackie had some idea _why_ Rose might not be in contact.

“You got any money on you?” Rose asked, glancing around. Wherever they were, it clearly wasn’t the Powell Estates. They’d need transport.

“No,” Mickey said. “Didn’t think I’d need any. The Doctor seemed to get by well enough being flat broke. And I didn’t think pounds would be worth anythin’ on the planet Zarg in the year two million, either.”

“Yeah,” Rose agreed distractedly. “How are we gonna get home, though?”

It turned out, though, that it wasn’t just in the 51st century that Rose could flirt her way out of a bit of a tight spot. Armed with enough money to get both herself and Mickey a bus home (and with a phone number scrawled eagerly on the back of her hand), they set off to figure out just how far they were from home.

Closer than they’d been since the Doctor left them, anyway, Rose thought. That was all that mattered.

When, two hours later, they’d climbed the many stairs up the Powell Estates, Jackie nearly flattened Rose when she mauled her at the door of her flat, pulling Rose into a desperate sort of hug.

“You’re making a habit of this, Madame!” Jackie berated her, tears streaming down her face. “No more, you hear? There'll be no more of this not letting me know where you are for years on end business!”

Rose felt tears just slightly prickle at the inside corners of her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall. “Yeah, Mum. I’m sorry. No more.”

She and Mickey never did tell Jackie what had happened during their time away, no matter how many times Jackie pushed for an explanation of why they’d been gone so long and where the Doctor was at now (and she was going to give him a slap like he wouldn’t believe when he showed up, Jackie promised darkly). They’d sort of silently agreed that it wasn’t going to help anything if Jackie knew.

After all, it was doubtful Rose would ever get out of her Mum’s sight again if Jackie had any real concept of the sort of things she’d seen and done out there in the universe. And she did have a life to lead.

Even if it was a life without the Doctor.

* * *

It felt like her whole life had passed her by, living day to day life in the year 2008. And at the same time, sometimes it felt like mere moments. As if the world was moving in slow-motion, and it only seemed to her as if it was passing at unfathomable speed because Rose was completely frozen in time.

After all that she and Mickey had been through, ordinary life – domestic life, as the old Doctor would have said – seemed so surreal that Rose thought perhaps she was dreaming it. Time passed like it did in her dreams. Seconds seemed to cling on for hours at times, and then at other times she’d look back and wondered what had happened to the intervening hours, and whether she’d time-travelled again by accident.

But then, nearly a year after arriving back on the Powell Estates and beginning her new life back on Earth, she heard the still-familiar groan and whoop of the TARDIS materialising. She doubted herself at first. Suddenly she didn’t know which part was the dream. If any of it was. Or if all of it was. Maybe there had never been a time-travelling alien called the Doctor. There were only the occasional (painful) reminders provided by her Mum and Mickey to tell her otherwise.

When she barrelled out of the building, having taken the stairs two at a time and at a dangerous pace, she thought nothing had ever seemed so real in her whole life as the TARDIS did right then. It was blue and angular against a dreary afternoon sky. She’d never seen anything so beautiful.

The door swung open with a squeak, and out stepped the Doctor, looking just the same as the day she’d last seen him. _Exactly_ the same, she noted, including that the exact same tie that had been stupidly wrapped around his head when he’d saved her and Mickey from those clockwork creatures was around his neck.

Their eyes met, and he grinned.

After a second had passed, and with it seemingly a whole lifetime, Rose became aware of the tear that had tracked halfway down her cheek. Another cascaded in its wake, and then yet another slipped down the other side like a mirror image. The rest (and there were many, many more just waiting to spring free, she was sure) didn’t make it that far, as they were absorbed by the Doctor’s coat as he arrived at her side and pulled her into his arms.

Rose clung to him, sobbing so hard she thought she might need a respiratory bypass system like his just to get through the burning pain of it alive. It was the first time in over a year that she’d cried. She’d been holding it in and holding it in – and there’d been so _many_ tears to hold back in all that time. And now the dam had broken, it felt like there might not be any way to mend it.

“I’m so sorry,” the Doctor whispered into her hair.

Rose pulled away, tears and mascara still streaming, and smiled a watery smile at him.

It took only a split-second to forgive him.

Of course, that was before she caught sight, over the Doctor’s shoulder, of Madame de Pompadour poking her perfectly coiffed head curiously out of the TARDIS.


	2. Original Ending Part A

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the original ending I wrote to this fic, presented in two parts.

“Oh,” Rose breathed, stepping back. “Right.”

Just when she’d thought she was standing on solid ground again, her whole world conspired to shift and swirl dizzyingly around her.

The Doctor frowned slightly, confused, and looked back over his shoulder to see what Rose was staring at. “Oh!” he said in a much more excited tone. A broad grin crossed his face. “Rose, you remember Reinette, don’t you? ’Course you do. Very famous, Reinette. Brilliant. Hard to forget.”

“Madame de Pompadour,” Rose acknowledged. “Yeah, I remember.”

“And let me tell you, all those stories about how brilliant she is? Completely justified! You know how I got out of France? Reinette moved the fireplace – you remember the fireplace – so I just had to put it back online with a bit of sonic screwdriver jiggery pokery to get it working. But then we got back on that ship only to find you and Mickey gone. Gone! Wandered off again, I thought. And usually I’d take this opportunity to remind you about Rule Number One, because nothing good ever happens when you break the first rule of travel in time and space, but ... well, I think I can let you off the hook this once. Just once, mind! And only because the TARDIS let me know what had happened. Five years, it was! Five whole years had passed on that ship, when only a few hours had gone by in France. Talk about your loose connections! The life of a time-traveller, eh? Eh?” the Doctor exclaimed, punctuating his rambling with a laugh.

“Even when you’re travelling through time without the TARDIS you can’t get it quite right,” Rose said. It didn’t sound quite as joking as she’d been aiming for.

“Hey!” the Doctor objected. Then his expression softened, along with his over-exuberance. “The TARDIS said you were there for months. I’m sorry.”

Rose thought, did the TARDIS also tell you about the horrors we saw there on the ship? Or do you think it was just like some extended stay in an exotic holiday destination? A bit of an inconvenience that was solved just as soon as we got off that ship?

Rose hoped that wasn’t what he thought at all. She still had nightmares. She didn’t necessarily want him to know all of it, but it’d be nice if he even partly understood the gravity of what had happened.

Aloud, Rose said, “We were all right, Mickey and me. We got out of it.”

“And where is Mr Mickey?” the Doctor asked, peering about as if he expected the man himself to appear at the drop of a hat the moment his name was mentioned.

“Dunno,” Rose said. “Or, well, he’s at work obviously, but I think it’s about lunchtime for him, so he could be out and about anywhere.”

“Work,” the Doctor said, working his tongue around the word like it was foreign. Rose supposed it was, to him. Or the concept of it was, at least.

“Yeah, we’ve been back here for comin’ onto a year now. Couldn’t live off crumbs and my Mum’s charity forever, could we?”

The Doctor looked surprised at this revelation. “The TARDIS was supposed to track you to one month after you’d left the spaceship. Just enough time for you to have the chance to get wherever you were going. Didn’t want to land the TARDIS in the middle of a group of Time Agents, did I?”

“Well,” Rose said, “I think I’ve already mentioned your sense of direction once today. Anymore and you’ll get all moody.”

“Oi,” the Doctor protested, but it didn’t sound like his heart was in it. His forehead was creased in consideration, like he was studying her a lot more deeply than she wanted him to be doing right then.

“Doctor,” Reinette called softly, “should I come out?”

The Doctor looked around at the empty lot beside the Powell Estate. “Don’t see why not. No one around. And this _is_ 21st century London; if anyone saw you they’d just think you were in fancy dress.”

“Or on a bender,” Rose added.

“On a what?” Reinette asked, stepping daintily out of the TARDIS, her immaculate skirts brushing the dusty concrete.

“Er ...” Rose said. “Never mind. Like the Doctor said. Fancy dress.”

“Oh. All right. But apart from the clothes, are we quite safe here?” Reinette asked, looking worriedly around her. “I thought we had come to the future, but this looks just as bad as some of the slums in my time. They were populated with ruffians and madmen, from what I’ve heard. Not at all the sort of place I’d feel safe wandering.”

“I live here,” Rose said, keeping her tone as even as possible.

“ _Here_?” Reinette repeatedly, shocked. She looked around again and then cleared her throat. “Oh. Well, it’s ... charming. Do all homes look like this in your time? I must begin getting used to the differences, I think. It’s hardly diplomatic of me to comment on a future I know nothing about.”

Well, at least she _knew_ she’d been rude, Rose thought. That was a start.

“Rose’s _mother_ lives here,” the Doctor corrected. “Rose’s home is on the TARDIS.”

Rose frowned. “No, really,” she said to Reinette. “I live here. Still. Have done for twenty years now, and nearly a year of that since I saw you last. This is home. If it’s good enough for Mum, it’s good enough for me, isn’t it?”

“Oh, of course. That’s not what I meant. It’s home still, when you’re visiting,” the Doctor agreed. “But I’m back now. All of the universe to see, starting right here right now. What d’you say?”

“No.”

“Brilliant! Right then! Where d’you want to – what? Hang on, _what_?”

“No, Doctor. I’m not coming. This is home, for now.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” the Doctor coaxed.

“Doesn’t it?” Rose bit out. She drew in a calming breath. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

The Doctor took a step toward her, and Rose took a step back. Like one of the dances Madame de Pompadour might have involved herself in back in France, but far less planned and far more awkward. She just couldn’t have him near right now, because if he came any closer he would take her hand in his, or pull her into a hug, and Rose just needed a few minutes to breath. And to think.

“Rose ...” the Doctor said. “What’s wrong? I know it’s been a year, and I’m sorry I left you like that, but –”

“You should invite Mickey to come along with you,” Rose interrupted. “We saw a bit of the universe when we were tryin’ to get back here, but I think he’d like to get back out there for a little while. He only really got one trip in the TARDIS, didn’t he? That’s not enough. And he’d really like it if you actually _offered_ this time, I think.”

“I offered once before. After the Slitheen,” the Doctor said, indignant. “Hardly my fault if Mickey was happy to stay here living the day-to-day.”

“Doctor, really. Please. Just ask him. Even if he says no, it’ll mean a lot to him. He was brilliant on that spaceship. Braver than me, sometimes. He’s not the tin dog, and he and I both know that now. He’d like it if you showed that you know it, too.”

The Doctor nodded cautiously, as if afraid that sudden movements might set her off unexpectedly. “All right,” he said slowly. Then he grinned. “Yeah, fine. Better than fine. Been a while since I’ve had four on the TARDIS at a time. Brilliant! The more the merrier!”

Rose shook her head. “Not four.”

The Doctor gave her a slightly condescending look, then. “ _Yes_ , four. Reinette as well, remember?”

“How could I forget?” Rose muttered.

“What?”

“Nothin’,” Rose said quickly. She looked away from him, unable to bring herself to look at those still-new but somehow so-familiar features. “’S’just ... Like I said. I don’t think I’ll be comin’ this time.”

“What?” the Doctor repeated.

“You’ve got Reinette,” Rose indicated at the other woman, “and Mickey, too, maybe. You don’t need me.”

Rose caught Reinette’s eyes pretty much by accident. There was that look she’d given Rose back on the spaceship. That look of sharing her feelings to an extent, but at the same time pitying her. Rose didn’t want to be pitied.

“I always need you,” the Doctor said, his voice quiet enough that Rose nearly missed it. She thought maybe she was _supposed_ to miss it, actually. Her breath hitched slightly, her throat feeling suddenly swollen.

She might still have the tear-tracks, stained dark with rivers of mascara, making unsightly patterns down her face, but Rose would be damned if she’d add to them now. She’d stopped crying as soon as she’d seen Reinette and realised what was happening. The shock of it had been enough to startle her out of sobbing, perhaps, or maybe it was a subconscious form of self-preservation in the face of this impending confrontation between herself and the Doctor. Whatever, crying right now wasn’t a great idea. She could hold on again until she made it up to her room. She’d been holding on for a year up until now. What was a few more minutes in comparison?

She wouldn’t let him see her cry over this. Not over _this_. She’d rather he just thought she was completely content with her decision. It wouldn’t do either of them any good for her to make it obvious just how much he was breaking her heart.

Because Rose had realised one thing over the past year. She might have been in a bit of a haze for part of it, waiting for her life to restart, but she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her forever like that. Waiting for him. Wondering why she wasn’t enough for him.

She wasn’t going to let herself be like Sarah Jane.

So, she thought, a clean break. Just what the doctor ordered.

She held in the hysterical laughter that almost bubbled up at that thought about as well as she was holding in that second wave of tears.

“Rose,” the Doctor said. “It’s a big TARDIS. Plenty big enough for a few more people. It worked out all right when we brought Mickey along, didn’t it?”

Yes, Rose thought, it did. But no thanks to the Doctor. Mickey made his own way through the stars, in the end.

“It wasn’t all right, though. He was the tin dog,” Rose said. “Even I treated him that way. I didn’t want him there. You saw that. But he shouldn’t have been the tin dog, or the third wheel, or whatever. And I _can’t be_ ,” she finished, her voice going strangely gravelly on the final two syllables.

“Never,” the Doctor promised.

“I remember you saying somethin’ along those lines once before,” Rose pointed out. “Or close enough. ‘Not you’, you said. Like you wouldn’t leave me. Like I was special. But it didn’t even take you a whole day to gallop off, leavin’ me in the dust.”

“I had to save history!” the Doctor exclaimed.

“Did you? Or did you have to save _her_?”

Rose looked at Madame de Pompadour with regret in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re really lovely an’ all. But the thing is, he’s messin’ about with history to have you here now. He jumped through that time window to make sure you lived because you’re important to history, but now he’s gone and taken you out of that history.” Rose glared at the Doctor, meeting his eyes again. “What happens if somethin’ goes wrong while you’re out travellin’ with her, and you can’t take her back? Because I know you care about the history part, but I think you care about being with her more, or you’d have left her there where she belongs. And that’s fine, Doctor. It’s okay to admit it, even. It’s actually nice to know you can care that much about someone. But I can’t be there watching it happen.”

“I know what I’m doing!” the Doctor shouted. “I’m not risking history like some blundering child. Just because _you_ brought Reapers –”

“Don’t you bring that up! You can’t say you forgive me and then go bringin’ it up to use against me whenever you feel like it!” Rose shouted right back at him. “And you’re doin’ somthin’ just as bad right now, anyway. You _always_ know what you’re doin’, isn’t that right? But things hardly ever work out just the way you think they will. People _die_ , Doctor. It’s not your fault, but it happens. It’s not fair to tempt fate like that, putting her into that situation. History _needs_ her.”

“I don’t believe in _fate_ ,” the Doctor spat.

“I know you don’t,” Rose said. “Nor do I, not really. But still, this feels like fate right here. This has been comin’ for a while, after all. You’ve been pushin’ me away, and look. Now I’m gettin’ the message. You and me can’t be together right now.”

“Don’t turn this back on me,” he warned darkly. “This is your decision.”

Rose nodded. “Yeah, it is. Because if you’re so close to her that you’ve decided established events or whatever you babble about can go and hang, I don’t think I wanna get in the way.”

“It’s not like that! Humans!” the Doctor exclaimed, exasperated. “Why do you always have to label everything to fit your own expectations?”

“What _is_ it like, then?” Rose asked. “Say I get on that TARDIS with you now. What d’you think is gonna happen, exactly? That we’re all gonna pretend that it’s not awkward as hell in there, and pretend that you’re not completely in denial about how you feel about her? I saw it Doctor. I see it now.”

“Is that all you see?” he asked, his expression hard.

“What’re you sayin’?” Rose asked.

The Doctor clenched his jaw. “Nothing. Nothing at all. So, you’re leaving then?”

“I can’t stay. There’s no choice here, really. I _can’t_.”

“Just think about this.”

“I’ve already decided,” Rose said. Even the Doctor couldn’t out-stubborn her when she was in this sort of mood. “But I’m decidin’ somethin’ else, too.” She fished her mobile phone out of her pocket and thrust it into his hand. “You promised me you’d never do to me what you did to Sarah Jane, right? So prove it. You hang onto this, and you _answer_ it when I call you one day when you’ve returned her to her own time. If you come back, then we can go from there.”

“I don’t go ever back,” the Doctor said.

“I know,” Rose said simply.

The Doctor stared at the phone in his hand, all pink and innocent-looking, as if it was a poisonous snake about to bite. He was silent for so long that Rose sighed at him.

“Don’t leave angry. Please,” Rose begged. “Mum always said you should never let an argument sit. Not that she was any good at takin’ her own advice.”

The Doctor still said nothing. Rose’s chest felt constricted.

“It’ll be all right, Doctor,” she continued. “It’ll work out better than ever this way, don’t you think? Time machine, remember? You can travel the stars with her, show her all that wonderful stuff, and be back here in just ten minutes. If you want.”

She walked away from him before he could say anything more, striding instead up to Reinette. Rose didn’t think anyone had ever looked so out of place in her London council estate as Madame de Pompadour all done up to the nines did right then.

“You look after him,” Rose ordered, her voice cracking. “He gets so sad, sometimes, and he wasn’t sad when he was with you, so ...”

Reinette reached out and laid a hand on Rose’s arm comfortingly. “It doesn’t have to be like this,” she said. “We could work it out.”

Rose shook her head. “I know you’re used to sharing and all, but I’m not. I can’t. Just ...”

“Look after him,” Reinette repeated understandingly. “Yes, I think I will.”

“And yourself, as well,” Rose added. “I wasn’t jokin’ about it bein’ dangerous for him to take you out of your time. Keep yourself safe.”

“I’ve seen what the Doctor’s life is like. I’ll be sure to be careful.”

Rose nodded, biting her lip. “Well all right then. And ... it’s scary out there. But it’s so damn beautiful as well. Just remember what you said. Worth the monsters, right?”

Reinette tilted her head in agreement.

Rose stumbled away, barely holding herself together now. She moved back over to the Doctor’s side.

“Right. So, ball’s in your court now, mister,” Rose announced, pressing the tip of her finger into his chest. This might be the last time she actually touched him, Rose thought distantly. “Answer the phone when it rings, show up back here under your own steam, forget me, even. Your choice.”

God, Rose thought, she hoped he didn’t just forget her, even if he did decide to wipe his hands of her. She couldn’t stand it if he just _forgot_ her. Not after Gelth and Slitheen and Daleks and watching him die and be reborn like some fairytale. She’d never forget him. Never. Not one detail of it. She wanted the same to be true on his part.

“Don’t worry, though,” she added instead. “If you decide ... you know, if you don’t come back. Don’t worry. I’ll have that fantastic life you wanted for me. Yeah?”

“Right. That life. Here.” The Doctor’s face was blank.

Rose forced a small smile. “I’ll see you then, Doctor,” she said, unable to quite say something as final sounding as ‘goodbye’. This way she could allow herself the illusion that he was coming back, at least.

She turned to stride back to the building, longing for the comfort of her childhood bed where she could have a good cry.

“Come with me,” he called after her, obviously allowing himself one last-ditch effort to change her mind. “Please.”

Rose paused, just for a moment, and her smile was suddenly just a smidgen more genuine. She doubted he’d ever asked anyone to travel with him as many times as he’d asked her now. It gave her a bit of real hope that he might, just this once, break his long-standing rule of never looking where he’d been.

“Come _back_ for me,” she countered without turning back around. “And for god’s sake, _ask Mickey_.”

She retreated into the building and didn’t quite make it up the stairs. When she heard, several minutes later, the sound of the TARDIS dematerialising, she knew he’d gone. And that was good. She wanted him to be gone. This was what was best for both of them right now. She’d grown up a lot in the past year. She could think about more than her own immediate needs, if she needed to. She’d been working on being a little less selfish, after all.

None of that stopped her from crying, though, her tears slowly gathering and spreading along the sharp edge of the step she’d leaned her face against.


	3. Original Ending Part B

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second and final part of the original ending I wrote for this fic.

It’d been a few months now, but Rose still hadn’t quite given up hope that the Doctor would be back. He’d taken Mickey along with him again, after all. At least that proved that he didn’t completely ignore everything she’d said to him that day out of anger with her.

It wasn’t as if she’d tried to call him or anything. It’d be different if she’d phoned him to ask him to come back for her and he refused, or just plain didn’t pick up. That’d be a sure sign that it wasn’t ever going to happen.

She ignored the fact that the reason she still hadn’t tried to call him was that she was just a little bit afraid that he _would_ do just that. She especially ignored the fact that those thoughts sounded like empty justifications even to her.

Just as she’d said to him, she’d told herself that she would be all right with it, if he didn’t want her along with him again. She was moving on with her life. She had a future now, even if it wasn’t with him.

She’d left the job she’d taken up before he arrived with Madame de Pompadour in tow, all apologetic but oblivious. It was a step up from Henrick’s – secretarial work in a nice firm. But she was fairly certain, with her sketchy background and lack of experience in the field, that the only reason she got the job is because her interviewer, and her superior once she’d started there, fancied her. Even though she appreciated the opportunities the job opened up for her, she’d wanted a role where the most appreciated thing was her hard work rather than the curve of her arse.

A few years ago, she wouldn’t really have cared. She might have even eventually had it off with said superior, since he’d been nice enough to look at. She’d changed since she first ran into the TARDIS, so young and naive. She really did think it was a change for the better, no matter how often she had nightmares of the horrors she’d seen during that time.

Since changing jobs, she’d always sort of expected that she’d be at work when and if the TARDIS finally materialised again. After all, UNIT knew all about the Doctor, and they kept an eye out around London for the sudden appearance of mysterious blue police boxes. If nothing else, the Doctor showing up was a good indication to them that things might be about to go pear-shaped, and quickly. The Doctor attracted trouble like no one else Rose had ever even heard of, let alone met.

But it wasn’t at work that she heard the vroop-vroop-vroop sound of her once home-away-from-home reappearing. It was when she was visiting her Mum on the Powell Estate one evening after work. Her Mum was in the middle of complaining that she didn’t see Rose often enough now, and that Rose had forgotten all about her poor mother. (“That’s not true, Mum, I swear. I’m just busy, is all. I’ll try and come ’round more often.”) She’d been mid-sentence, and there it suddenly was in the distance. That sound used to mean that new worlds were just outside the door waiting for her. Now it meant that her old world might have come back to her, if she was very lucky.

Mickey was already nearly inside the building by the time she collided with him, wrapping herself around him in a gleeful hug.

“Hey babe,” he said casually into her hair, but he wasn’t fooling her. He was gripping her just as tightly as she was hanging onto him.

“I missed you,” Rose whispered, and knew she’d been missed in return by at least one of the most recent occupants of the TARDIS. Mickey might have grown up a lot in recent years, but it seemed that they’d sort of managed to grow in the same direction, because he was even more of an open book to her than he’d been back when they were still dating.

Mickey pulled back and smiled at her. “Still at the Estate, then? Thought you’d have taken over the world by now. I know you’ve got plans.”

“Oh, they’re in progress. I put complete world domination at about the year 2020. Just give me time,” Rose teased, returning the smile. “And I’m just here for Mum. My flat’s across town now. Closer to work. Nicer area.”

“Rose Tyler, movin’ up in the world.”

“Better believe it,” she said.

“You don’t need _him_ to be a force to be reckoned with, then, do you?”

Rose’s smile fell and she went quiet. She didn’t need the Doctor, no. But that didn’t mean she didn’t _want_ him. And right then, with him and the TARDIS so close that she’d been able to hear the sound of it before, she really wanted him right _there_ with her, greeting her as enthusiastically as Mickey. Perhaps even more enthusiastically, if she was honest.

So where was he?

“Just home for a visit, then?” she asked, trying to prompt Mickey into supplying some information without coming right out with it and sounding desperate.

Mickey shook his head. “Nah. Got the Doctor to drop me off. I liked seein’ the universe an’ all, but I missed the garage and the boys. Don’t tell ’em I said that, though.”

Unlike Rose, Mickey was fairly comfortable with his position in life. He didn’t have great ambitions, or what her Mum frequently referred to as ‘airs and graces’. He liked being a mechanic. So a few months travelling the universe was just like a Gap year for him. He’d returned older and wiser and knowing that he’d proven himself, but he was willing to get on with life again all the same.

For Rose, travelling the universe _was_ her life, and she’d never quite get over that, even if she never actually got out there and experienced that again.

That seemed more likely by the second. Mickey’s reference to being ‘dropped off’ didn’t exactly give her hope that she was about to pack her bags and run off to 67th century Mars or some such any time soon.

“Oh,” she replied, still trying to sound nonchalant. “So ... the Doctor’ll have left already then, I suppose. Busy man. Places to be.”

She apparently wasn’t any better at fooling Mickey than he was at pulling one over her.

“He’s still there,” Mickey said. “He’s waiting, I think.”

“For what?”

Mickey gave her a ‘are you actually that stupid or are you doing this just to annoy me’ look. He’d clearly been hanging around the Doctor too long.

“For you, sweetheart,” he said softly. “He’s not gonna come to you. You know him. Still, I think he needs you right now.”

“Madame de Pompadour ...” Rose started, but trailed off at seeing Mickey’s expression. “She’s dead?”

Mickey shrugged. “Sort of. We dropped her back in France in her own time, so she’s long since dead now, anyway. And the Doctor can’t go back for her again, so she might as well be dead to him.”

“When?” Rose asked.

“When did we take her back?” Mickey clarified, and Rose nodded. “Just three days ago.”

So Mickey was leaving him just on the heels of Reinette’s departure from the TARDIS. The Doctor was all alone again, after having a relatively full TARDIS, with people to occupy his attention all around.

He must be so lonely, she realised, and he wasn’t going to be the one to do anything about it. He tended to suffer in silence, the Doctor. It took someone else coming in and forcing themselves on him to break that cycle. So even though she’d said it was his choice to come back for her, perhaps he’d come far enough after all. Perhaps it was up to _her_ to take that last step that separated them. He’d made it countless years and miles to breach the gap. The least she could do was make up the last hundred feet or so.

And the worst he could do when she showed up was throw her out again. For the opportunity to see him again, and maybe even comfort him a little, she’d take that chance.

Once Mickey had indicated the direction in which she’d find the TARDIS and given her a knowing look, she didn’t take off at a run, exactly. It’d been years since she’d ever walked quite that fast, though.

She still had her key, of course, since the Doctor hadn’t asked for it back and she was never going to be the one to offer it up voluntarily. It still hung about her neck like a constant reminder.

She could use it if she wanted to.

She didn’t. It wasn’t fair on him to not give him the choice of whether to invite her inside. So she knocked.

The door swung open immediately. Rose thought that maybe the TARDIS didn’t share her opinion that the Doctor should get that choice. He was clearly not the one who’d let her in, since he was nowhere in sight, and there was no one else in the TARDIS at the moment who could have done it either.

“Thanks girl,” she whispered. The TARDIS had always seemed to like Rose, sure, but she was the Doctor’s ship in the end, and she was unlikely to take Rose’s side over the Doctor’s. Rose wanted to let him decide, yes, but it was fairly clear to her that if the TARDIS was taking active steps to get Rose inside, the Doctor must really need her.

Need _someone_ , Rose reminded herself. It didn’t necessarily need to be her. Thinking any differently was a trap that would only further raise her hopes, and she wasn’t sure she could take having them dashed down from an even greater height.

“Doctor?” she called. The lighting in the console room was the same as always, she was sure, but somehow the space still seemed just a tinge darker. It was a little melodramatic to think so, but perhaps the TARDIS might be mourning along with the Doctor.

It hurt Rose just a little to think that even the TARDIS had been that attached to Reinette. Just how long had the Doctor travelled with her before he’d returned her to her own time, anyway? Mickey hadn’t looked much older than the last time she’d seen him, but perhaps she should have asked him how long he’d been away this time. Appearances could be deceiving, after all.

“I’m here,” the Doctor called, and Rose found him sitting on the grating on the other side of the console, blocked from the view of the doorway, with his back leaning against a strut of coral. He seemed completely unaware of the obvious discomfort he must have been in sitting on the floor like that.

“Hey,” she greeted softly.

“Hi,” he responded tiredly.

She sat beside him, quiet for a moment. “So UNIT’s probably settin’ up surveillance ’round here right now,” she said, apropos of nothing. She needed to break the tension with something uncontroversial, and that seemed as good to her as anything at that moment. “Did you know they track you whenever you’re on Earth?”

The Doctor eyed her. “Yes, I did. The question is how _you_ know that.”

Rose shook her head wryly. “It’s a long story, and there’s a lot of red faces involved, let me tell you. But the short of it is that I needed a job, and Mickey’d done all that research on UNIT when he was lookin’ for you when I was missin’ that one time, so I decided to go get a job with them. I rocked up there and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently they already had a file on me anyway, what with the Sycorax invasion and all, so it wasn’t hard to catch their attention. And I hope you don’t mind, but your name tends to open doors there.”

His half-smile was heartbreaking, because she was used to seeing unstoppable grins on that face, and this seemed forced. He never used to have to force smiles with her. Or at all, since his regeneration. She didn’t think she’d seen him that sad since he’d stood opposite a Dalek with a massive gun lowered and effectively admitted just how devastated losing his people had made him.

Had losing Reinette been on par with losing his planet? Rose certainly hoped not, for his sake as well as her own.

“You wouldn’t be the first to find an in with UNIT because of me,” the Doctor admitted. “Rose Tyler, defending the Earth from aliens. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Better you than most of the humans out there, I’d say.”

Rose scoffed. “Not defendin’ anythin’ so much. Haven’t even got my A-levels yet, have I? I’m just a research assistant.”

“But you’ll climb the ranks and be running the place in no time,” the Doctor said, sounding absolutely confident in that fact. As if he couldn’t imagine a future in which she wasn’t doing just that.

Rose’s heart felt like it’d dropped into her stomach. He wasn’t planning on taking her with him, then. He was expecting her to stay there with UNIT for the foreseeable future, building a career with them instead of a life with him.

Breathe, she reminded herself, _breathe_. She could do this. She’d set up that job and this life for herself for a reason, in preparation for having to stay on Earth. She’d considered that possibility a lot, though she’d never let herself believe that it was definite. She could manage. There were a lot of good things tying her to Earth that would ease the way, especially now that Mickey was back.

It would do her no good to let the Doctor see her distraught over losing him, anyway. She wanted him to remember her as strong and independent, not some whining child who was upset over not getting her own way.

“Yeah, one day I’ll be right up there in UNIT,” Rose agreed. “And then maybe I can do somethin’ about all those guns they wave about at the drop of a hat.”

The Doctor’s smile seemed more genuine at that, which pleased her inordinately. “Rose Tyler, you really are brilliant.”

Then take me with you, if I’m so brilliant, she thought.

“Yeah,” she said instead, and lapsed into silence.

The TARDIS, bigger on the inside though it might be, suddenly seemed claustrophobic, with the two of them not quite knowing what to say to each other. Their relationship had once been so easy. She thought, with the benefit of hindsight, that that might have been partly because they ignored many of the things that really mattered in favour of being light and easy with each other. There was no need for awkwardness if they just always talked around the uncomfortable subjects, was there?

She knew, though, that if this was their last chance to talk to each other like this, they could no longer avoid talking about the really important stuff. She couldn’t let him fob her off like he usually did. She thought about bringing up Madame de Pompadour, who was dead in every way that mattered, and the walls seemed to close in on her.

But never let it be said that Rose Tyler was afraid of confrontation.

Strangely, she didn’t even get the chance to bring it up, because he did it all on his own. That was different, she thought. Normally he fought tooth and claw against talking about anything personal unless they were stuck in some life-or-death situation.

“You were right,” he said. “About Reinette. I nearly got her killed.”

She was quiet, allowing him to continue at his own pace. She did, however, find his hand with hers and interlace their fingers comfortingly. He looked down at their two hands, which still fit so well, and sighed a little.

“I showed her the stars for a few months, just like I promised. Tried to keep her away from big historical events and real danger. But you know how rubbish I am at that.”

It was those times that they’d found themselves in the middle of a proverbial snake pit that Rose had enjoyed the most about their travels, though. She’d missed running for her life, and even being tied up in dank prisons with seemingly no way out. Rose Tyler and the Doctor, in the TARDIS, saving the universe. That, to her, was perfection, even if she kept nearly dying all the while. It wouldn’t have been nearly as worthwhile travelling the universe if he’d actually succeeded in keeping them out of trouble.

But Reinette only tolerated the monsters for sake of the Doctor, rather than wanting to seek new and terrifying creatures out for their own sake. The danger and horror wouldn’t have been her idea of paradise at all. Also, while Rose didn’t like to think of herself as any more expendable than Reinette, the world could probably cope quite all right if Rose Tyler died facing off with violent aliens. History would be far more dramatically altered, though, if Madame de Pompadour died millions of years after her own time on a planet that 18th century France was unaware even existed.

“She’s all right, though,” Rose said. “Reinette. She’s fine.” She knew this from Mickey, so it wasn’t a question. It was a reassurance.

“She would have died five years later,” the Doctor said. He really _was_ in mourning, Rose realised, seeing the expression on his face. “She was far too young to die.”

“Yeah,” Rose agreed softly, “she was.” But it was history, and she didn’t know what would happen if the Doctor tried to go back and save Reinette from an early death. Perhaps the Reapers wouldn’t come. But Rose had foreseen how history might change for the worse without necessarily causing a paradox. Sometimes the world around them just adjusted to the change. But some adjustments weren’t exactly preferable to the status quo. Like that time in Cardiff with the Gelth, they might have changed her past without necessarily making her fade away into nothing, but it wouldn’t have been anything like a change for the better.

Maybe humans weren’t always the smartest or most compassionate lot, but she loved her stupid planet the way it was. She didn’t want them set back a hundred years or something. Not even France.

“I’m sorry,” she added eventually. She knew the Doctor loved Reinette, even though she was trying very hard not to think about the nature of their relationship too deeply. If the Doctor and Reinette had ... well, then she didn’t really want or need to know. She’d slept with Mickey that one time since the Doctor left her, and that had felt bad enough. She’d felt so guilty, both towards Mickey and the Doctor. It had helped her a little at the time, but not nearly as much as it had hurt her to think of in retrospect. And that wasn’t some grand love affair like the Doctor and Reinette had. That was just comfort with a friend, who just happened to be an old boyfriend as well.

Not that the Doctor didn’t have the right to have some grand love affair, she reminded herself. They weren’t together that way, and never had been. They weren’t even travelling together now. Rose had no real claim on him at all. And even though it felt like he did, she supposed he had no real claim on her either.

It didn’t feel true, though, that they weren’t somehow more to each other than just casual friends. Or maybe she just didn’t want it to be true.

“I’m sorry, too,” the Doctor said.

That was new and different for him as well. He didn’t often apologise for anything. Move on and never look back, that was her Doctor. In that respect, this man with a new face was no different from the man she’d first met.

“For what?” Rose asked, genuinely curious.

“I yelled at you when I knew you were right.”

“It’s fine,” Rose said, waving her hand dismissively at him.

The Doctor shook his head. “It wasn’t. You should never put up with that.”

She’d put up with a lot worse from him, and even worse again from men more generally. She’d understood at the time that he was on the defensive, anyway. So getting an apology from him made that barely-noticed slight seem more than worth it.

Still, no point in telling him that or he’d never apologise to her again out of self-awareness. Presuming they even saw each other again, that was. “Yeah, catch me lettin’ you off the hook again,” she said instead, poking her tongue out.

He smiled again. Each time it seemed to come more freely, as if it had been a while since he’d last done it and his muscles were just now slowly remembering how. But he’d only left Reinette days ago, and he’d been happy with her, so that was impossible.

“So, you’re on your own again?” Rose asked, and nearly kicked herself for bringing up his loneliness. It was probably one of the most taboo topics that existed between them.

“Yeah,” he said. If she didn’t know him at all, she might have believed at that moment that he was truly all right with that. He was putting on a good facade, she’d give him that much.

That facade would only hurt him in the long run, though. Cracking through it, though it might hurt initially, would be better for him, even if it made him angry with her.

“You should find someone,” she said. If she was going to discuss the hard things with him, then this was clearly one of the things they needed to talk about. She hated to think of him replacing her (again), but she hated thinking of him roaming sadly about the universe on his own even more. “You need someone with you, I think.”

“I’m fine on my own,” the Doctor said.

“No,” Rose said simply. “You’re really not.”

The Doctor swallowed and looked away from her.

“Who would I even ask?” The Doctor’s voice sounded strangely strangled, as if he was trying not to cry. Rose frowned. She didn’t remember ever seeing the Doctor close to tears, let alone actually shedding them. “I never used to have to ask people along. They sort of stumbled into the TARDIS whether I wanted them to or not. Now I have to beg people, and even then they keep leaving me.”

It might have been vain to think that they were talking specifically about her now, but Rose thought that she was at least a large part of that statement. It seemed too pointed, and a little too raw, for it not to be directed at her.

“But havin’ to ask isn’t the worst thing in the world, is it?” Rose asked. “At least that way you get to choose who to have on board.”

The Doctor shook his head. “If I got to choose, really, then I wouldn’t be alone now, would I?”

“I’m sorry Reinette had to leave,” Rose said.

The Doctor looked at her once more, but this time he had that ‘you stupid ape’ look that was so reminiscent of her first Doctor that it practically made her see big ears and crew-cut hair superimposed over his current face. Oh yeah, Mickey had definitely learned that look he’d used on her earlier from the Doctor.

“Reinette was wonderful,” the Doctor said. Rose nearly flinched, but she knew she had to hear him out no matter how difficult the Ode to Reinette might be for her to listen to.

“Yeah,” Rose agreed.

“She was wonderful, and beautiful, and clever, and I missed you the whole damn time I was with her.”

“Huh?” Rose asked.

The Doctor turned his body more towards her and reached his free hand – the one not still caught up in hers – towards her face. He cupped her cheek, and her heart raced.

“I _begged_ you not to leave. I never even ask normally, and there I was pleading over and over again, and you still left. Why did you leave?”

“I had to,” Rose breathed.

“Because you thought you were second choice, right? But you never were, Rose. _Never_. I did try to tell you that, but you wouldn’t believe it then. Please believe it now.”

All thoughts of having to stay in London working at UNIT for the remainder of her future flew out the TARDIS door at that moment. How could she even think about leaving him when he was looking at her like that? She’d tie herself to the console if necessary, but she couldn’t leave him alone again now. Not with those sad eyes on her.

His words might not have been ‘I love you’, but Rose thought it was so damn close in meaning that she just didn’t care. She didn’t need the words just yet. One day she’d like to hear them if she was going to stay with him forever, like she’d always wanted since meeting him. But for right at that moment, she thought the sentiment might be enough to be getting on with. The rest could come with time.

“Come with me,” he said. “ _Please_.”

After all his talk about having to beg her, and how much that had hurt, Rose knew what that request cost him to say out loud yet again.

“Yeah,” she said. “All right. I’d love to come.” As if there’d been a question from the moment he’d admitted he’d missed her.

She pulled him into a hug, which turned out to be incredibly awkward with them still sitting with the grating digging into their backsides and their legs suddenly tangled together oddly in front of them. But all the same, she couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be, and anything she’d rather be doing.

She found his mouth with hers and breathed in his sharply exhaled breath as their lips and their tongues met. She mapped out every inch of his mouth as efficiently as she could. She thought it was a good place to start in the quest to get to know the Doctor, physically and otherwise, more intimately than she’d been allowed the last time he’d been with her.

He wasn’t anything like as aggressive in the kiss as she was, but he was far from pushing her away. His tongue traced hers with more caution than she showed, but the contact was no less sweet for that. She shuddered at the feel of him both accepting and returning the kiss.

When they pulled apart so she could breathe – damn him and his respiratory bypass, she thought – he looked dazed. His hair stood straight up, spikier than usual from where her fingers had run their way through it. He looked so thoroughly snogged and rumpled that Rose would have sworn he’d just gone several rounds in bed if she hadn’t known better.

The kiss was not something she expected would immediately be echoed regularly between them. The Doctor was not that sort of man. She loved him the way he was, so she was all right with that. But with that kiss she thought she’d managed to break down a solid brick wall into rubble, and though that rubble still provided something of a barrier between them, individual rocks could be shifted over time. Whatever had happened between him and Reinette, or her and Mickey, ceased to matter quite so much with the knowledge that they weren’t going to remain stuck in this limbo between friendship and awkwardly wanting more forever.

It was going to be a long road, but Rose was sort of all right with that. Drawing it out could be fun, after all.

She grinned at the Doctor and ran her hand over his jaw affectionately.

“Better go an’ get my stuff, then. My flat’s miles away, so you’ll have to take us there in the TARDIS. And I’ll have to let UNIT know I’m takin’ off. I think they’ve been half expectin’ it since I started there, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Though they will still have my phone number, so I’d be prepared for the occasionally emergency call if I were you.”

He still looked a little too stunned to really comprehend what she was saying.

Wow, Rose thought, was she actually that good?

“But first,” she said, “I’ll have to tell Mum and Mickey. Don’t suppose you wanna come up? Mum’s been waitin’ a whole year to slap you, and it might be better to just let her get it over with now.”

He definitely had understood that well enough, because the Doctor suddenly looked horrified.

She laughed – the happiest laugh she’d managed since all the way back when they’d met Queen Victoria, she thought – and raced out of the TARDIS without waiting for a response, knowing just how much the Doctor was _not_ looking forward to seeing Jackie again now. If Rose was lucky, she might even be able to restrain her Mum from bolting downstairs to bang on the TARDIS door, unwilling to wait until the Doctor brought Rose back for a visit to give him a nice handprint-mark on the cheek.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes!” she called back to him, letting the TARDIS doors swing shut after her. The last few times those doors had closed with her on the outside, it had felt depressingly final. This time, she’d made a promise, and he’d as good as promised as well. She doubted that he’d be going anywhere without her for a good while.

Rose Tyler and the Doctor in the TARDIS. The whole universe in front of them. And a hand that fit perfectly to hold.

After all they’d been through, neither of them were likely to say no to that now.

~FIN~


	4. Redux Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The alternate ending I wrote to this fic on request by kilodalton. This follows on from the end of Chapter One.

Rose pulled away from him abruptly, the sad but relieved smile she’d been sporting falling away. The Doctor tensed, ready to spring into action, because Rose looked for all the world as if she’d just seen a twenty-foot tall alien made entirely of slashing blades walking up behind him, frothing at the mouth and ready to kill.

Except that there was nothing behind him but Reinette, who was peeking out the TARDIS door curiously to see where he’d landed them. He quickly relaxed again, though he couldn’t shake his bewilderment at Rose’s odd reaction quite as easily.

The Doctor smiled encouragingly at Reinette as she looked around. It hadn’t really been his intention for this to be her first trip, of course – as far as he was concerned, this was purely a brief rescue mission to save Rose (and maybe Mickey, if he was lucky) from the clutches of Jackie Tyler – but the Doctor really couldn’t think of anywhere better to take her for her first time away from her own era than 21st century Earth anyway. Oh, there were more beautiful places, and more exotic, but the _people_ here...

The Doctor looked back to Rose, who stood there like the embodiment of his point.

Neither Reinette nor Rose was looking particularly impressed with his choice to bring Reinette to this time and place, though. In fact, he didn’t think Rose had ever looked at him with so much bitterness (and that included when he’d let Mickey come along with them, and even that time he’d somehow – completely _accidentally_ , mind – melted her favourite pair of leather boots by using them to prop up some of the white-hot wiring he’d been fixing under the TARDIS console). There was something underneath her unusual hostility as well. Was that expression _pain_? He’d never had much trouble reading Rose’s emotions before, but he didn’t think that he could be correctly interpreting what she was feeling this time. Whatever she’d had to go through to make her way back from that spaceship in the future, she surely couldn’t still be hurt. He’d _know_ it if she was.

Uncomfortable about the fact that no one was talking – _imagine_ not having anything at all to say, honestly – the Doctor filled the silence with the type of pointless babble that he barely even paid attention to himself. It was something about Reinette, he was fairly certain. All he could really remember of it later was that maybe if he reminded Rose and Reinette just how much the two women had in common, Rose would stop looking at Reinette as though she was the exact opposite of brilliant.

Then Rose looked at him in the exact same sort of way she was looking at Reinette, and whatever he’d been saying died away.

“The TARDIS said you were there for months,” he said after a long moment. “I’m sorry.”

He could see quite clearly that Rose went to say one thing, and then changed her mind. “Yeah,” she said instead. “ _Months_. And then comin’ onto a year back here.”

“I... what?” the Doctor asked, stunned. “A year? How could it have been a year? It was difficult to track you, of course – Time Agency technology is complete rubbish, as you probably know after trying to use it – but the TARDIS should still have been able to track your arrival time within a couple of weeks or so. A month at the outside!”

“Yeah,” Rose laughed, but she didn’t sound at all as though she found anything funny. “Well. I guess I know how my Mum felt now, don’t I?”

The Doctor frowned. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. Then he brightened. “But I’m back now, see? And we’ve got so many places to show Reinette. And Mickey! Where is old Mickey boy, anyway?”

Rose was shaking her head at him as if he was speaking an incomprehensible language and the translation circuit wasn’t working for her.

“You...” Rose said, and then shook her head. She muttered something that even the Doctor’s superior hearing didn’t quite catch, except for the last word, since it was said with much greater vehemence, like a curse: “ _Men_!”

She walked away, pointedly ignoring the Doctor as he called after her.

“Ah,” Reinette said delicately, from behind him. He turned to see her walking towards him, pointedly ignoring the fact that her skirts were clearly gathering dirt from the dusty concrete. “I see that some things are very different in future times. In my experience, it would not be considered prudent for a woman to put on that sort of display. I expect there are many things of that kind that I shall have to get used to, travelling with you.”

“Display?” the Doctor repeated. He felt much stupider at that moment than he was _ever_ comfortable with feeling (given that he was, after all, usually quite the genius, and proud of it).

“Yes,” Reinette said simply. “You should give her some time to gather herself before imposing yourself on her again, I think. Even if she doesn’t have to recover from the shame of acting that way in front of you, I imagine that she will at least need some time to wash away all that unseemly face paint that was running down her cheeks.”

The Doctor started, his gaze darting off towards the direction in which Rose had fled. He’d been so happy to see her that he hadn’t even noticed... had Rose been _crying_?

“Perhaps you could show me some of those stars we talked about in the interim, while we are waiting for her,” Reinette suggested.

The Doctor, still staring off after Rose, wondered what would be the best way to explain to Reinette that there seemed little point in revisiting all of those stars he’d stared out at with such longing back in Versailles if Rose wasn’t at his side to experience them as well. He might have new eyes through which to look at them, but it still felt much more as though he was witnessing the universe anew if he was seeing it through _her_ eyes.

The words he’d been trying to form were completely wiped away as Reinette captured both of his hands in hers. That was the moment when the Doctor properly _realised_ the source of Rose’s disconcertion.

He stared down at his right hand with a sense of dawning horror. Admittedly, he hadn’t had that hand long (even less time than he’d had the left mirror of it), but he’d certainly had it long enough that it should be recognisable to him. However, grasping a much daintier hand than the one it usually found its way towards like a magnet, it looked as though it belonged to a complete stranger.

Perhaps it did.

Standing there like that, with Reinette, he had no free hand to hold Rose’s. Nothing in the entirety of his very long life had ever felt quite so wrong before.

He dropped Reinette’s hands abruptly as though they’d burned him, trying not to feel guilty at the expression that prompted.

“I can’t,” he said. “I have to...”

He gestured towards the towering Estate building.

Reinette eyes narrowed just slightly, giving him a sort of shrewd look. “Is that different in the future as well?” she asked.

“Is what different?” the Doctor asked.

“That it is considered acceptable for a man to take more than one mistress. She acted as though that was not to be expected.”

The Doctor gaped at her. Where had _that_ come from? Couldn’t she see that that wasn’t at all what was going on? Not that the Doctor could really explain what _was_ going on. Even after 900 years of living, he still hadn’t anywhere near figured out women. He could make a good case, in fact, that female humans were the most inscrutable of the lot.

“That’s... that’s not... No one’s anyone’s mistress,” the Doctor finally said, and then frowned. “Well, strictly speaking, you’re the King’s mistress, aren’t you? Obviously. But that’s back there, not here, and not with me. Time Lords don’t have ... _that_.”

Reinette looked politely incredulous. “You forget, Fireplace Man, that I have seen inside your mind. I know what you feel for her, and how you have touched her in the past. And I am certainly well aware how you have kissed and danced with me, as I was very much present at the time.”

The Doctor didn’t really know what to say to that. He didn’t think that any of the arguments he’d stored up in the months that he’d been denying there was anything more than friendship between himself and Rose would work any better against Reinette (who seemed to know him so well, and so instantly) than they did against himself.

Perhaps the truth of it wasn’t so much that he didn’t understand women after 900 years, but that he didn’t even understand himself.

“It’s like you said,” the Doctor explained weakly. “These things are different in the future. And in _all_ of time and space, when it comes to Time Lords.”

Reinette just looked at him, as if she was reading his mind just as effectively as she’d done when he’d been scanning hers hours (or years, from her perspective) earlier.

“I don’t believe it’s any different at all,” she concluded.

The Doctor opened his mouth to refute her yet again, but found the words were stuck in his throat. Reinette just nodded once, somewhat curtly, as if satisfied that her point had been proven.

“I need you to stay in the TARDIS,” the Doctor finally said, giving up on what seemed to be a losing (or lost) battle. “I have to go explain things to Rose. Seeing those stars will come later. Hopefully.” He added that last word so softly he wasn’t certain that Reinette had heard it. He wasn’t sure that he wanted her to.

He escorted Reinette back through into his ship and shut the door between them, only to swing it back open again a second later. “And when I say ‘stay here’, I mean _stay here_. Right here. In the console room. I can’t have you wandering off dressed like that into 21st century London – bad enough that you were standing about in the Powell Estate where anyone could see you – and you’re bound to get lost in the TARDIS if you go looking about before you’ve got at least a vague idea where things are, in which case it might be months before –”

“Doctor,” Reinette interjected. “If you ask me to stay, then of course I shall stay. There’s no need for all of these unnecessary explanations. I think your time would be better spent elsewhere.”

It would probably be counterproductive for the Doctor to complain about the fact that Reinette was apparently actually listening to him about not wandering off, especially considering that he seemed to spend half his life tracking down one person or another who’d ignored Rule Number One. Still, it was just another thing that was suddenly jangling the Doctor’s nerves in a wholly unpleasant way. It was just _wrong_ to have one of his travelling companions simply _obey_ him like that, as if there was no question of his having that authority, without that person at the very least knowing what was at stake if they disobeyed.

Rose would never have just...

But Reinette wasn’t Rose, and it would be entirely unfair for the Doctor to wish her to be. Hadn’t that been part of what had drawn him to Reinette in the first place? That things were different? At least with her, he’d had no choice but to be swept along in their dance, while with Rose things had somehow become so unbearably complicated that he couldn’t even figure out where to put his foot down next.

That was something he’d better figure out quickly, he realised, since he was apparently going to have to not do anything to muck things up even worse than they already were between himself and Rose.

Just a few days ago, that would have sounded like an easy task. Right then, though, it sounded like a very tall order.

The Doctor closed the door once more to prevent himself from retreating back into the TARDIS like some kind of coward, leaving himself nowhere to go but after Rose.

She was, as he’d expected, in her mother’s flat. When Rose herself answered the door, the Doctor released his breath in a rush of relief; it seemed that Jackie Tyler wasn’t lying in wait for him after all. He could only imagine the force of the whack he’d be getting for this mishap.

“Hello,” he greeted sheepishly. “I’ve done something very stupid.”

Rose looked at him expectantly. “And what’s that, then?”

The Doctor didn’t think that it would be a good idea to mention that he’d actually been hoping Rose would tell him the exact nature of his mistake. He only knew that he’d made one, because it was very clear that things weren’t _right_ with Reinette waiting back in the TARDIS and Rose seeming entirely ready to dig in her heels and stay with her Mum for the foreseeable future (and the Doctor could foresee quite a _lot_ of the future, actually, so that was particularly worrying).

“I, er... I left you behind on that spaceship,” he said. “And Mickey,” he added as an afterthought. “I got all caught up in saving the day. You know how I get.”

“Yeah. I really do know, now, huh?” Rose said tiredly.

The Doctor caught himself reaching out for her hand before he got close enough that she would have to choose whether to allow the contact or jerk away.

“What _happened_ on that ship?” he asked.

A flicker in Rose’s eyes, and the way she glanced quickly away from him, told him that her assertion of, “Oh, you know. Nothin’ much,” was a complete lie.

He had a brief thought that Mickey would be only too happy to tell him all the details, but then he realised that he didn’t actually want to ask Mickey. He’d rather hear the truth from Rose’s mouth, or not at all, since it was clearly something that was important enough to her to keep a secret. He knew what that was like, after all.

“And?” Rose eventually prompted.

“And what?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “The list of other stupid things you’ve done.”

“There’s a list?” the Doctor asked. Rose’s look would have made him break out in a sweat, had he been human like her. He gave her a hopeful look. “And... I didn’t ask you whether I should invite Reinette along?”

Rose shut the door in his face.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have phrased it as a question.

“Ow!” the Doctor cried, rubbing his nose.

“I _so_ didn’t even hit you, you baby,” Rose’s muffled voice came through the door. “Honestly, no one’d ever guess you were 900 years old.”

“It was a very close call,” the Doctor complained. If he’d had his last nose...

Well, if he _had_ still been that man, he probably wouldn’t be standing outside this door in the first place, would he? They would have been back on board the TARDIS, just the two of them (or maybe the two of them and Jack, but he didn’t really want to think about _that_ ). That had been the kind of man he’d been then.

Was he really so different now?

The Doctor’s eyes widened. “I did something else fairly stupid,” he called through the door, trying to sound placating. “I turned into this new man, you see.”

The door swung open with as much force as it had slammed.

“Too right you did,” Rose said, crossing her arms defensively over her chest and giving him a look that said that she was _waiting_ , and that this time whatever he said had better be good or the door was closing more permanently. “As if it’s just about askin’ me... _He_ wouldn’t have...”

The Doctor winced. If Rose honestly believed he was a completely different person, that it had all been some lie to disguise the differences, then he very much doubted that she’d be back travelling with him any time soon.

“In all the ways that really _matter_ , I’m still him,” the Doctor reminded her. “But it’s going to take a little while to sort all the quirks out so that I don’t just...” Just run off and forget about what’s important when something else interesting comes along, he thought. Just push her away again and again, and treat her like she was just another passing human he’d picked up without meaning to. He didn’t think any of it needed saying. She knew, better even than he did, what he’d done.

“How long do you think that’ll take?” Rose asked. “To figure things out.”

The Doctor felt a bolt of panic rush through him. Was she suggesting that she would rather _wait_ for that time? Not travel with him until he’d worked himself out properly? But what if he never quite did? It was always a dodgy sort of process, after all.

“Less time with you there to help me,” he quickly said. He saw the slightly twitching at the corners of Rose’s mouth and the panic faded somewhat.

“What d’you need me for?” Rose asked. “You’ve got all these other people you keep invitin’ on board the ship. Sarah Jane, and Mickey, and... _Madame de Pompadour_.”

He considered reminding her of Adam, and Jack, and the fact that she had been the one who'd suggested that he should invite Sarah along, and had first pushed him to invite Mickey as well back after the Slitheen had tried to take Downing Street over. For once, though, he kept his mouth shut. He knew that there were a lot of things he didn’t understand about 21st century human women, but he understood the expression she was wearing now – and had likely been wearing earlier if he’d thought to look for it – well enough from personal experience (again, because there’d been Adam, and Jack, and Mickey).

Time Lords had always thought themselves above petty emotions like _jealousy_ , but then the Time Lords were a bunch of pretentious idiots, and were only too happy to lie to themselves if it allowed them to continue believing they were above the rest of the universe.

“I thought...” Rose flinched slightly as if her own words were physically painful for her. “After all your talk about timelines and whatever, with my Dad, I thought you would never do somethin’ like that yourself. But then obviously you decided she’s worth the risk. What if something happens to her? Things’ll change, won’t they, and not for the better, either.”

He went to say that of course he would get Reinette back safely, and that no one would be the wiser for her having left; he wasn’t some novice time-traveller, of course, as Rose had been when she’d saved her father. But it occurred to the Doctor – as it probably should have done hours ago, before he’d ever offered Reinette the stars in the first place – that the life he led wasn’t really conducive to promises like that. And it wasn’t that he wanted to put Rose, or any of the others he’d travelled with, into that kind of danger any more than Reinette, but Rose was right; it would be far more catastrophic to the timelines if Reinette was killed in some time other than her own, as she was supposed to. She still had several years' worth of living to do.

“I don’t want to stay here,” Rose admitted. “I _want_ to go with you. But I’ve had some time to sort of grow up, you know? Mickey and me both. Mickey’s seen enough now that he says he’s sort of happier stayin’ here, not havin’ to play second fiddle to anyone anymore. And me? Well, I don’t need to be out there in space again so much that I’m gonna just accept your leftovers.”

The Doctor had been fully prepared to eventually hold out his hand as an offer (a peace offering, perhaps), giving Rose the choice of whether to take it or not, the same way he had after he’d regenerated. After that comment, though, he snatched her hands up – both of them, in a more forceful and somehow more intrinsically _right_ reflection of how Reinette had held his hands earlier.

“Leftovers? I told you that you could spend the rest of your life with me,” the Doctor reminded her. He’d never intended to bring that conversation up again – it was just too painful – but it clearly _needed_ to be said. In a choice between protecting himself from some future pain and actually, properly _losing_ Rose right now just because he’d failed to make himself entirely clear, there wasn’t much contest. “Do you honestly think I promised her that as well? Or that I’ve _ever_ promised it to anyone else?”

Rose seemed taken aback by this, but not so much so that she didn’t have one last argument close at hand. “I know you,” Rose accused, her voice significantly less steady than it had been. “It’ll be one more trip, and just one more, and it might be the rest of her life before you even know it, even if you don’t mean it to be.”

The Doctor scowled. “No, it won’t be like that. I didn’t _think_ ,” he admitted. He hated having to say those words. “I just wanted to show her that the universe is so much bigger than she imagined. The same as I want to show you all.”

Rose’s expression softened, _finally_. “But you can’t.”

The Doctor looked at her. “I can. Show _some_ of you, I mean.”

“But not her,” Rose said. “Doctor...”

“I know,” he admitted sharply.

He hated to think of Reinette’s disappointment when he had to take her back. Back to where she _belonged_ , he reminded himself.

Something of that feeling must have shown on his face, for Rose bit her lip and said, “You could stay there with her. If that’s what you wanted.”

“No,” the Doctor said quickly. “I couldn’t.”

He hated to leave Reinette behind. Of _course_ he did. But he hated the idea of Rose leaving him even more.

“Right,” Rose said. “You’ve got the TARDIS, and all of time and space to see.”

“Yep,” the Doctor said. “ _We_ do.”

Rose’s smile was the best thing the Doctor had seen in... well, as long as it had been since she’d last smiled at him quite that brightly. It had been longer than he’d have liked.

“Yeah?” Rose asked.

“Yeah,” he affirmed.

The relief brought by the sight of her smile made him worry, once again, just how lost how he’d feel when she really did leave him, whether by choice or not.

For now, though, walking back to the TARDIS with her in tow (already on the phone to her mother to let her know that she was leaving again, and wasn’t the Doctor glad he could avoid _that_ confrontation for a little longer), he supposed that that was an unnecessary conversation.

All he knew was that, for now, the feeling of their hands together felt right, and would continue to feel right long after it was just the two of them on the TARDIS once again.

~FIN~


End file.
